Children in the Morning Read online

  Dedicated to the memory of my mum and dad

  There are children in the morning.

  They are leaning out for love,

  And they will lean that way forever.

  — Leonard Cohen, “Suzanne”

  PART I

  Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?

  Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?

  I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it.

  — Bob Dylan, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”

  Chapter 1

  (Normie)

  You should know right from the beginning that I am not bragging. I was brought up better than that, even though I am the child of a broken home. That’s another thing you should know. BUT — and it’s a big but — (I’m allowed to say “big but” like this but not “big butt” in a mean voice when it might be heard by a person with a big butt, and hurt their feelings) — but, about my broken home, Mummy says people don’t say that anymore. Anyway, even if they do, it doesn’t bother me. It kinda bothers my brother Tommy Douglas even though he’s a boy, and a lot of times boys pretend they’re tough. Tommy never says, but I know. We have another brother, Dominic, but he’s a little baby so he’s too young to know anything. However, the whole thing is not that bad. That’s probably because we don’t have the kind of dad who took off and didn’t care and didn’t pay us any alimony. When you’ve been around school as long as I have — I’m in grade four — you know kids who have fathers like that. But not my dad. We spend a lot of days with him, not just with my mum. And they both love us. They are in their forties but are both still spry and sharp as a tack. It’s stupid the way they don’t just move back into the same house together but, aside from that, they are great people and I love them very much.

  Mum is Maura MacNeil. People say she has a tongue on her that could skin a cat. She is always very good to me and never skins me. But if I do something bad, she doesn’t have to stop and think about what to say; she has words ready to go. She teaches at the law school here in Halifax. My dad is Monty Collins. He is really sweet and he has a blues band. I always ask him to sing and play the song “Stray Cat Strut” and he always does. It’s my favourite song; I get to do the “meow.” He is also a lawyer and he makes faces about his clients. They’re bad but he has to pretend they’re good when he’s in front of the judge so the judge won’t send them down the river and throw away the key. Or the paddle, or whatever it is. It means jail.

  I forgot to tell you my name. It’s Normie. What? I can hear you saying. It’s really Norma but you won’t see that word again in these pages. Well, except once more, right here, because I have to explain that it comes from an opera called Norma. Mum and Dad are opera fans and they named me after this one, then realized far too late that it was an old lady’s name (even though the N-person in the opera was not old, but never mind). So they started calling me Normie instead.

  I am really good in math and English, and I know so many words that my teacher has got me working with the grade seven book called Words Are Important, which was published way back in 1955 when everybody learned harder words in school than they do these days. And I have musical talent but do not apply myself, according to my music teacher. I am really bad at social studies but that’s because I don’t care about the tundra up north, or the Family Compact, whoever they are. But it was interesting to hear that we burned down the White House when we had a war with the Americans back in 1812. Tommy says we kicked their butts (he said it, not me). You never think of Canadians acting like that.

  Anyway, I must get on with my story. As I said, I’m not bragging and I don’t mean about the math and English. I mean I’m not bragging about what I can see and other people can’t. Because it’s a gift and I did nothing to earn it. And also because it’s all there for other people to see, but they are just not awake (yet) to these “experiences” or “visions.” I’m not sure what to call them. They say about me: “She has the sight.” Or: “She has second sight, just like old Morag.” Old Morag is my great-grandmother. Mum’s mother’s mother. She’s from Scotland. And she is really old; it’s not just people calling her that. She must be eighty-five or something. But there are no flies on her, everyone says. People find her spooky, but I understand her.

  I am looking at my diary, which says Personal and Private! on the cover. I hide it in a box under my bed. Nobody crawls under there to spy on my stuff. The diary is where I kept all my notes, day after day, about this story. I am taking the most important parts of it and writing them down on wide-ruled paper, using a Dixon Ticonderoga 2/HB pencil, a dictionary, and a thesaurus. I am asking Mummy about ways to say (write) certain things, but I’m not telling her what I am writing. All the information you will read here is my own.

  It all started in the waiting room of my dad’s office. He came and got me from school at three thirty on the day I’m talking about, Thursday, February 13, 1992. He still had work to do, so he took me to the office. I sat there with a kids’ magazine, which was too young for me really, and the bowl of candies Darlene keeps behind the reception desk. There were two other kids there around the same age as me, a girl and a boy. They looked sad and scared about something, so I tried to cheer them up. They were staring at the candies, and I shared them. They said thanks. Since Daddy was taking such a long time, I decided to work on my poster.

  I go to a choir school. It goes from grade four to grade eight. Me and my best friend, Kim, are in grade four so this is our first year at the school. Kim is taller than me and has long blond braids and no glasses. We wear a uniform that’s a dark plaid kilt, white shirt, and bright red sweater. The boys don’t wear a kilt, but they could, because there are a lot of Scottish people around here and they would think it’s normal. But the boys wear dark blue pants.

  Anyway, I was making a poster for our new program to give free music lessons to kids in the afternoons when regular classes are finished. One of the teachers came up with the name “Tunes for Tots” (“tots” means little kids), but Father Burke put his foot down and said no. He said that name was too “twee.” Another teacher said we should call it “Four-Four Time,” and he went along with that. Four-Four Time is a good name because we have it four days a week, Monday to Thursday, and it starts at four o’clock. It goes for an hour and a half. So, four days at four o’clock. “Common time” in music is four beats to a measure and the quarter note has one beat; a whole bunch of songs are written in that time, and it’s called four-four time. I didn’t go to it that day, but I usually went. Anyway, about the program. The teachers at the choir school take turns staying after school for it, and we, the students at St. Bernadette’s, can go as often as we want and help the kids who come from other schools for free music lessons. We also provide healthy snacks. It is really to help poor kids, but nobody would say that to them, because it wouldn’t be polite.

  I mentioned Father Burke. He runs the school, and he also runs a choir school for grown-ups, including priests and nuns; it’s called the Schola Cantorum Sancta Bernadetta. Father Burke’s first name is Brennan and he was born in Ireland, which you can tell from the way he talks. People think he is stern, aloof, and haughty. The thesaurus also says “lordly,” which would be true if it means he works for the Lord but he doesn’t think he’s the Lord himself, so I’ll leave that one out. But he’s not. Or at least, deep down, he’s not. He can seem that way to people who don’t know him. But I do, and he is very kind, especially to children.

  Anyway, I got out my paper and markers, and got down on my hands and knees in Daddy’s reception room to work on the poster.

  “What’s that?” the little girl asked.

  “Oh, it’s a thing they star
ted at my school. They’re giving free music lessons to kids, plus treats, books, stuff like that.”

  “Can anybody come to it?”

  “Yeah! You guys should come!”

  “What school is it?”

  “St. Bernadette’s Choir School, on Byrne Street. Do you want to come?”

  “Maybe. It sounds good.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Jenny and that’s my brother, Laurence.”

  Jenny had wavy brown hair down to her shoulders, and she had it pulled over to the side of her forehead with a white barrette shaped like a kitty-cat. Laurence had short, dark brown hair and was bigger than Jenny.

  “I’ll write your names down on the back of the poster, in pencil, so I can tell Father Burke you’re coming.” I asked her how to spell their names and I printed “Jenny” and “Laurence” on the paper. “What’s your last name?”

  “Delaney.”

  “I know how to spell that,” I told them. “I saw that name somewhere.”

  They looked at each other but didn’t say anything. I wrote it down.

  Then Daddy came out, and a woman came out with him and took the kids with her.

  Later on, I found out why they looked sad and scared. They had a family tragedy!

  (Monty)

  I was in the courtroom when they came for Beau Delaney. I was early for my own court appearance, and walked in during Delaney’s summation on behalf of his client.

  “And yet again, My Lord, we witness the spectacle of the state’s jack-booted goons trampling the rights of an innocent, law-respecting, own-business-minding citizen of this province. A man to all appearances secure in his home. I’m sure Your Lordship holds dear, as do I, the dictum of the great English jurist, Sir Edward Coke, that a man’s home is his castle. That a man should be safe and secure in that castle, however humble an abode it might be. That he should not have to quiver and quake, tremble and twitch lest he hear that most fearsome of sounds, the knock on the door in the dead of night, perpetrated by the rednecks in red serge, poster boys for a nation that has sold its soul for peace, order, and good government, Renfrews of the Mounted, goose-stepping into history over the bodies of those whose rights they are sworn to uphold.”

  It was vintage Delaney. The mild-looking, bespectacled Mountie who had led the raid on Delaney’s client’s trailer rolled his eyes as the diatribe went on. He’d heard it all before. Then the Mountie’s attention was drawn to something happening at the back of the courtroom. I followed his glance and saw two Halifax police officers coming in the door, looking tense. They sat in the back row, and leaned forward as if ready to spring. Justice MacIntosh made quick work of Delaney’s argument that the search of his client’s property was illegal, and found the man guilty of cultivating marijuana contrary to Section 6 of the Narcotic Control Act. Sentencing would proceed at a later date. Delaney gave his client a “you win some, you lose some” shrug, stood, and packed up his papers. The two Halifax cops got up and went out the door.

  Beau Delaney was the best-known criminal defence lawyer in Nova Scotia. He was probably the only lawyer whose name was a household word across the province. A giant of a man at six feet, five inches in height, with a long mane of wavy salt-and-pepper hair brushed back from his forehead, he wore glasses with heavy black frames, the kind you often saw on Hollywood movie moguls. Delaney was known for his flamboyant manner and courtroom theatrics; he was the object of envy and barroom bullshit. He greeted me after he snapped the locks of his enormous briefcase, and we left the courtroom together.

  The minute the courtroom door closed behind us, the cops moved in.

  “Beau Delaney?”

  “Yes?”

  “You are under arrest for the murder of Peggy Laing Delaney.” His wife of nearly twenty years.

  I heard from Delaney that night. He asked me to represent him on the murder charges, and I arranged to see him at the Halifax County Correctional Centre the following day. So we sat down and faced each other across the table in a lawyer–client meeting room at the Correc. Delaney looked as if he had been there a month.

  “What’s the story, Beau?”

  “I wasn’t there.”

  “You weren’t home when Peggy died?”

  “No.”

  “Did you give a statement to the police?”

  “I told them I wasn’t there. Period.”

  He shouldn’t have said even that much.

  “Why do the police think you were home?”

  “Because it fits with their theory that I killed her!”

  “They must think they have evidence that you were at the house.”

  “I was out of town, and I came home —”

  “— Just after your wife fell down the stairs.”

  “Save your breath, Montague. I’m a professional so I’m not going to say what Joe Average Client would say: If you don’t believe me, I’m getting another lawyer. You and I are grown-ups. We’re lawyers. Whether you believe me or not, I wasn’t there. That’s my defence. Take it to trial and get an acquittal. Now I’m tired, having been kept awake by a near riot in this place last night, so let’s talk bail.”

  That could wait.

  “Where were you the night she died?”

  “I was in Annapolis Royal for a three-day trial. I drove home rather than stay another night when it was over. Didn’t bother to call Peg; I just got in the car and headed home.”

  “Who can we get to say you weren’t there?”

  “I’m not sure. The kids were all in bed.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because if they were up, they’d have been looking for their mother and probably would have found her. But they didn’t. I did. They were asleep when I got home.”

  “Where do you park your car? You have a garage, right?”

  “Yeah, but we never park in it. It’s full of junk.”

  “So you leave your cars in the driveway.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The Crown must have somebody who claims you were there.”

  “Well, it will be your job to find out, and discredit them.”

  “Let’s hope the Crown doesn’t have a pile of will-say statements from your neighbours stating they looked out and saw your car there just before they sat down to watch the evening game shows.”

  “Won’t happen. You’ll be interested to hear that the medical examiner did not conclude Peggy was murdered. He said the facts were consistent with an accident or an assault; it was impossible to make a conclusive finding either way. The Crown couldn’t hope to prove murder beyond a reasonable doubt with that, so they shopped around for a second opinion. They got lucky with Dr. Heath MacLeod. Ever heard of him?” I shook my head. “He’s a new pathologist in town. It’s clear he’s got a bright future ahead of him as a prosecutor’s expert. In his opinion, Peggy was struck on the head with a large rock, and then fell — or more likely was carried by me and placed at the bottom of the stairs.”

  “A rock? In the house?”

  “Yeah, unfortunately, we did have some big rocks in the house. One of our neighbours had a stone retaining wall. He replaced it with a new brick one, and our kids asked if they could have the old stones to build a castle. He said sure. The kids started their building in the backyard. They managed to lay half a dozen stones before a freezing rain storm blew up. End of the season for outdoor construction. They began hauling the rocks inside, with a view to building their castle in the basement. Peggy and I told them to move them out of the way, and wait for spring to do it outdoors. But they never got them all out of there, so some rocks were still on the basement floor when Peggy fell.”

  “They were piled at the foot of the stairs?”

  “No, off to the side a bit. But the way she fell, she hit her head on them.”

  “And the Crown sees this how?”
/>   “They say I picked up one of the rocks, bashed Peggy’s head in with it, then carried her down the stairs. She was found on the basement floor and her injuries were consistent with a fall, so, since the Crown can’t get around that fact, they have to say I went down there, picked a rock from the pile, and brought it back to the top of the stairs, where I hit her with it. Then, since the rock was under her head, they say I panicked and arranged her body so her head was lying on the rock that fractured her skull. Panicky but precise is what I’m alleged to have been. I’m sure they’ll leave open the alternative theory that I pushed her down with such force that she fractured her skull.”

  “That’s it? That’s the Crown’s case as you see it?”

  “The Crown doesn’t have a case.”

  “What do you say happened?”

  “She obviously fell down the stairs.”

  “Backwards.”

  “Apparently so.”

  “How do you suppose that came about?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

  “You must have given it some thought.”

  “Of course I have!”

  I was silent for a long moment, then said: “Let’s talk about the show cause.” The bail hearing. We discussed the ins and outs of that, then we dealt with housekeeping matters, that is, fees and payment, and I left to drive back into town.

  So. The guy wouldn’t say anything beyond “I wasn’t there.” You’d think Beau Delaney would know better. That may look like the best defence in the world: My client didn’t do it, My Lord; he wasn’t even there. But in fact it’s often the worst defence of all, because if it turns out the police can place him there, it’s over. With other defences — insanity, self-defence — you have room to manoeuvre. The fact that he was there doesn’t kill you on day one. Or day two.

  But right now, I had to get him out on bail. I started preparing for that as soon as I got to the office on Barrington Street. I also asked my secretary, Tina, to track down any news stories she could find about Peggy Delaney’s death. She had something for me by noon, from the January 17, 1992, edition of the Chronicle Herald.